Acylamino acid racemase is widely distributed among actinomycetes. It is a specific enzyme which catalyzes the racemization of optically active N-acylamino acids but does not act on optically active amino acids, and its properties have already been made clear in detail (U.S. Pat. No. 4,981,799; Abstracts of Papers presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry, page 368, 1990).
As mentioned above, acylamino acid racemase is a useful enzyme utilizable in the production of optically active amino acids. However, any satisfactory process for producing said enzyme at low cost and in an efficient manner has not been developed as yet and, accordingly, the advent of a more advantageous method has been awaited.
Under these circumstances, the present inventors made intensive investigations and made a report on acylamino acid racemase produced by Amycolatopsis sp. TS-1-60 (Abstracts of Papers presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry, page 368, 1990). Furthermore they succeeded in cloning a DNA encoding said acylamino acid racemase from Amycolatopsis sp. TS-1-60 and, after further investigations, they have now completed the present invention.